1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to mobile communication devices and the associated communication networks within which they operate, and more particularly to user interfaces of mobile communication devices used for retrieving and processing remotely-stored voicemail messages.
2. Description of the Related Art
“Voicemail” is a common feature for practically all voice-based communication products. As examples, home telephone systems now offer voicemail features built right into telephones, telephone companies offer voicemail services in their phone networks, corporations provide voicemail for every desk with integration with e-mail, and wireless carriers offer voicemail packages in connection with their cellular telephones. The average professional may have two or three different voicemail systems that must be checked for new voicemail messages from the home, the office, or cellular telephone. Each voicemail system typically has a different password access and different command codes for the same voicemail functions (e.g. PLAY, REWIND, SAVE, and DELETE).
The result of the above is that the end user must check several different voicemail systems for voicemail while away and remember each set of voicemail command codes. One way to handle this problem is to manually forward all phone calls (i.e. via call forwarding) from all devices to a common unified messaging service (UMS). Here, the end user can check all messages at once from a single voicemail location. However, this solution is prone to problems since the end user may forget to forward phone calls as necessary, may be too busy traveling to regularly check for voicemail messages, and may forget passwords needed to access the voicemail systems.
Accordingly, there is a strong need to provide unified methods and apparatus for handling and processing voicemail messages to reduce the problems created by today's use of multiple voicemail systems. There is also a strong need to simplify the user interface for retrieving and processing voicemail messages from several different voicemail systems.